Poems of RV

My Subject is laundry, and the pity of laundry,
The poetry is in the washing.

Exposure: A tribute to The Laundry of Doomed Youth.

What are these clothes tainted,
Dye or sweat?
Bundles too thick for the dhobis extrication,
One titanic bundle did shrink his eyeballs tormented,
Wading sloughs of cloth did the dhobi set to wash,
Batter and splatter of flying soapsuds,
The cloth spilled out dye like a wound that bleeds a fresh,

Fragile pink garment,
Lost amid the dyed sea.
It plunges, guttering, choking, drowning,
Colours incomparable, the dhobi launders.
Out of the dryer, comes the gentle pink,
Ravished purple-yellow smeared.
In the bundle did it come.
Over silly pink shorts did Marianna fret.
She said, “I am a weary, a weary.
Oh, God! That I wish I were dead,
On those shorts much colour has bled
To see my dear pink so faded.

-Mariyam Thomas (dedicated to my pink shorts, which incurred severe damage by a psychopathic dhobi), 2002.